In an Iowa gym, Republicans faced a choice. They chose Donald Trump

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

76% : Trump won here, as he did almost everywhere in the state.
64% : In 2024, Trump appeared to win this county and came within a whisker of winning all 99 counties in the state, an unprecedented victory for a contested Republican caucus.
59% : Ramaswamy immediately endorsed Trump.
59% : Trump is now piling up endorsements from high-level Republicans, as people want to join the perceived winner.
56% : It was reflected in the fact that other candidates had local community members speaking on their behalf in Van Meter; taking the microphone for Trump, however, was a U.S. congressman, Jason Smith, who came up from Missouri.
55% : Edwards always hated politics and took an interest because of Trump.
55% : Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses with just over 50 percent of the vote, an unprecedented margin in a year where there is serious competition.
53% : At this high school gym, in what might have been Haley country, the vote results were Trump 85, DeSantis 79, Haley 64, Ramaswamy 21.
49% : (Alex Panetta/CBC News) Unprecedented Iowa margin for Trump
45% : Another retiree said he felt like he was voting for the legitimate incumbent president: Trump.
43% : It chose the path of Donald Trump.
43% : He saw Trump as the first politician willing to fight for a nationalist agenda - like putting tariffs on foreign goods, and, again, pushing for the wall with Mexico.
37% : After they voted, Trump supporters brushed off the warnings they'd heard, like the one from Akers.
36% : He said he'd voted twice for Trump.
35% : The remaining Republicans opposed to Trump pleaded with their fellow partisans to choose a different path.
35% : Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio just joined the pile endorsing Trump, a bitter break for someone who endorsed Rubio in 2016:
34% : This is three years after Trump appeared politically dead: he'd lost the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and his supporters had tried interrupting the transfer of power for the first time in the 232-year history of U.S. elections, the Civil War notwithstanding.
34% : " Don Grunwold says, after voting in Van Meter, Iowa, that Trump got 'ripped off' in 2020 and should still be president.
33% : Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley dropped into a Des Moines diner on caucus day Monday.
32% : He won by an unprecedented margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while former UN ambassador Nikki Haley finished third, and Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out to endorse Trump.
30% : (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) He grew angry while discussing the criminal charges against Trump, which he derided as anti-American forces trying to sideline him.
28% : But something snapped that day a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol to keep Trump in office.
24% : Among Trump supporters, nearly three-quarters said he should keep running for office even if he's found guilty of a crime; anti-Trump Republicans disagreed.
21% : She warned that Trump also turned off swing voters and that could cost victory in the election against President Joe Biden.
20% : (Alex Panetta/CBC News) Trump supporters: 'People are pissed' They insist the election was stolen from Trump; they dismiss Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot as an inside job led by the FBI, or by left-wing anarchists, or both; and no amount of media stories to the contrary will make a difference because they don't trust the media either.
16% : " At a high-school gym in Van Meter, Iowa, Joel Akers tells fellow Republicans why he can no longer support Trump and is endorsing Nikki Haley.
13% : A speaker on behalf of DeSantis, Jackie Abram, warned that Trump would be too distracted by criminal trials this year to fight the general election.
4% : The numbers reveal a fault line in the Republican Party - on one side, a mere 10 per cent of Trump supporters say Biden was legitimately elected; most supporters of other candidates agreed Biden won.

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